Saturday, October 13, 2018

REVISED
9/10/2016 - My wife, Marietta, a Master Gardener, told me I was misspelling
"Ficus" when I first showed her a draft of this post. I explained
that Microsoft Word, with which this was written, did not accept the spelling
"f-i-c-u-s", and kept substituting "f-i-c-h-u-s". She said
that was "unfortunate". I also told her that the Microsoft
vocabulary did not have the Texas word "thang" and kept substituting
"thong". She said that was probably "fortunate".My friend, Ira Lipson, also tried
to save me from embarrassment by correcting the “fichus” / “ficus” situation by
informing me, as my wife had attempted, that the correct spelling of the plant
name was “ficus” not “fichus”.So, now I
have corrected the spelling, okay!

Brainz version- September 25, 2016

I
have a “gift”. Okay, I actually have several “gifts”, but I do have a “gift” of
spatial perception. For example, I can look at a jumble of stuff and tell if I
can pack it all into an assigned fixed space or not, right down to the tiniest
item in the littlest place. Like, loading boxes, trunks, appliances,
packages, and so forth into the back of a truck. Or a trailer. Or the trunk of
a car or a self-storage unit. I discovered I had this gift, when as a young man
quit a newspaper job and got a job loading trailers at United Freight Service
(UFS) on the “Midnight Sort”. I was a “Loader” and that was my official UFS /
Teamster job title.

Some
think that people who load trucks are desperate immigrants or unskilled
half-wits. We had those, but we also had people who had fallen on hard times,
like myself (who pushed himself into hard times), a Summa Cum
Laude attorney whose firm had lost a major client, a former MD who
apparently specialized in malpractice, and Gary who laughed out loud at the
movies he made in his mind. We did not “bond” because we hardly saw one another
and we each had one or more trailers to load during our shift. But, we did go
out after work to a strip club once or twice.

This capacity for spatial perception has been a great gift to have
because we have moved a lot over the years. One of my favorite moves which has
now gone down into family legend has been the move from Pennsylvania to
Michigan, or as we call it, “The Ficus Move.”

I had perfectly loaded, and I mean perfectly loaded
a 26-foot Ryder rental truck, the one with a “Grandma’s Closet” (the little
space over the cab) with our family’s belongings. That included bicycles,
appliances, aquariums, books, boxes, wardrobes, tools, the lot. Now, when a
loader says “perfectly loaded”, that means tight. Pardon me while I
take a narrative side-road to explain the technical term “tight” for
you lay-people, but I assure you it’s integral for your understanding of
the Ficus Move story.

“Tight” was a technical
term which my loading colleagues and I researched because our boss commanded us
to ‘”packed it tight”. “Que?” said one. “Is there a case law definition
of tight?” asked another. Gary giggled. We retired to the Spotlight
Strip Club to conduct careful, scientific observations using spatial perception
over many data gathering sessions and held lengthy debates. Given our weird
constellation, and the Spotlight Strip Club as our research lab, it was not
surprising we argued intensely over Catholic and Mexican cultural, legal,
mathematic and physiological factors which Gary turned into a movie and giggled
about. Our research concluded scientifically that
“tight” means there is less “wiggle room” (or free space for movement) between
packed items in our loads compared to the space between the fanny-flesh and the
thong of “Miss Easy Evil” at the Spotlight Strip Club. We are sure becausethe
MD suggested we used the well-known “Three Bears” statistical
methodology which he used in all his research. So, for control purposes, the MD
helped us gather comparative anatomical data on “Miss Toothpick Annie” (‘She
ain’t got no fanny!’) and “Miss Judy Booty” (‘That girl’s got a bonus booty!’).
And then he said, “Come to Poppa, ‘Miss Easy Evil’ you is just right
as the operational definition of tight!” If this scientific definition has been
something you have been worrying about, I am glad to have helped.

Now, back to the Ficus Move story. My Ryder
rental truck load was “tight”, so tight I wanted to take a snapshot of the full
load because the overhead trailer door would just barely clear the last few
items. I mean it was a mover’s dream. Tight and perfect.

Then I heard my wife, coming around the corner of the house
calling out “Can you get in the Ficus?” And there she came
with my eldest teenage son, a 6’3” lad who could probably press and easy 200#,
dragging a 3-gallon terracotta pot with a 5-foot Ficus tree which had been
sitting in the corner of our living room.

A brief moment of panic. Was this something I forgot? Maybe. My
gift is spatial perception, not house plant detection.

Now, if the question had been, “Is there room for
the Ficus?” The answer would have been “No!” because the load was perfect and
tight. If the question had been “Am I too late to get the Ficus in?” The answer
would have been “Yes!” because I had been loading all day, just pulled the door
down.

“Can you get in the Ficus?” she
repeated, and here they come dragging that dang Ficus. I raised the overhead
door and looked over at the Ficus. That thing was big! Did I
mention this load was tight?

My wife had worked in mental health, psychiatry specifically, for
decades by this point in our marriage. So, the question “Can you get
in the Ficus?” may have been a clever intra-spousal psycho-analytic challenge
aimed at some deep-seated Freudian masculinity thingy. That would have pissed
me off. But since she’s a Jungian, I doubted it, so I didn’t get angry.
My guess was that the question was a lucky, off-the-board, 3-seconds left in
the game “Hail Mary” half-court shot by an indoor garden fanatic. Can you?
Can you? It swished in.

Can I? I looked at the perfectly packed, tight load. I looked at
my wife. I looked at the Ficus again. I looked at my teenage son, he smirked.
He knew daddy’s “spatial perception” was caught. I knew what
sleeping on the couch meant. I looked at the Ficus and considered its 3-gallon
pot, its broomstick shaped trunk, and its weird leaves. Then my spatial
perception “gift” kicked in, and I began mentally re-arranging the load.

It was not easy. It was not pretty. Let’s just say I had to
violate good loading protocol and exceed the laws of physics to get that Fichus
loaded. It should not have been physically possible to cram in that 3-gallon
pot and Fichus into that “tight” load any more than it was possible for “Miss
Judy Booty” at the Spotlight Strip Club to load that much fanny-flesh around
her thong. But, I was there for the foundational research: I saw her bonus booty
and it was moving. I regretted seeing both. Such is the stuff of movers’
nightmares. I must admit that I used a few loader 4-letter incantations, and
applied leverage, and I got the Ficus loaded.

Since then I won’t attempt spatial perception or loading anything without
looking over my shoulder and asking my wife well in advance, “Ficus?”

She just laughs.

P.S.
- The Ficus survived the legendary move and to this day sits in our living room
in a 4-gallon pot. It now has two additional limbs. Those are weird leaves.

TECHNOLOGY POSTS

WRITING A MEMOIR OR PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY? Use the three simple questions: “Who Am I?”, “Why Am I Here?” and “What Do I Want?” as prompts for journaling and deep reflection. At our core are questions, not answers. Who forms the answers also forms the one that answers the questions - you.